Tales from The Trenches Archive

In the Name of the Bug

When I worked in the trenches, I was a QAC, or a person who organized groups of testers and went over their work. As such, it was my ::cough:: privilege to read and edit every bug they wrote. Being a good tester is all about being able to describe PRECISELY any problem you find in a game. As a consequence, the best testers are often good with words, and can come up with accurate yet funny titles for their bug reports. Below is a collection of my favorites.

“Gender confusion ends the game”
This was a bug written for a cell-phone game. The main character is named “Sam” and is a tiny sprite on the screen. At the end of the game, Sam is shown frenching a hairy, moustachioed male. Turns out ‘Sam’ was short for ‘Samantha’.

“Licking bush causes unit to vibrate uncontrollably”
This one is from another cell phone game. The main character was a yoshi-like thing with a long tongue used to eat enemies. If you used the tongue attack on the ‘bushes’ in the game, the cell phone would vibrate without end until you pulled the batteries.

Finally, my personal favourite:
“Not enough whores in the whorehouse”
This was for a console game some of you may know. There is a mission in the game where the main character goes to a whorehouse. The main character has other characters talking into his ear over the radio. One says something like “woo, look at all that hoochie”; another says something like “stop staring at the T & A and get to work”. The problem? Not a single whore. The level was empty except for enemies and other objective.